Based on a National Info-communication Strategy, conceived in line with EU principles, the government launched the National Digital Development Programme in 2014. Government decisions 1404/2017 and 1175/2018 constituted the Digitising Strategy for Public Collections 2017-2025 (Közgyűjteményi Digitalizálási Stratégia – KDS), earmarking 15,2 billion forints (cca 50 million euros) for the first four years.
The text of the strategy is available at the KDS portal https://kds.gov.hu/. It discusses all aspects of the issue, including preceding and related projects, relevant EU measures, foreign samples, and a detailed design of the procedures to follow. An additional White Book elaborates on the standards and technicalities of digitisation. The portal displays the progression of the programme at detail. In August 2021, the counter marked 5,033,801 documents having made accessible in the programme. Beyond museum, library, and archival items, this also includes 27 virtual exhibitions.
The National Film Archive contains 423 films considered as Hungarian Classics. This archive includes an online pay-per-view film library but also has free opportunities for educational purposes. The nemzetiarchivum.hu (national archive) is an online, pay-per-download photo and press (TV, radio) collection, containing 304 007 photos and 987164 press materials.
The Petőfi Literature Museum runs the Digital Literary Academy, which keeps digitised oeuvres of contemporary writers who make their works available on the Internet by contract. Created in 1998, this unique endeavour has between 30 and 40 members at any time. New members are co-opted by old members once a year to replace deceased ones. The full oeuvre of new members is digitised, put on free display, and their authors receive a monthly allowance four times the value of the official minimum wage. In 2025 the programme hosts the works of 174 past and current members. In addition, the works of earlier writers (as posthumous members) are digitised: their numbers are close to those of past and present members.
The Hungaricana project of the Library of Parliament aims at sharing Hungarian cultural heritage amassed in various collections. Its special features are historical maps, postcards. This is a free service unlike the huge digital collections of Arcanum Ltd. This private enterprise specialises on Hungarian language periodicals and books but also features a variety of maps. Fortepan is a highly popular open access, community photo archive containing over 200,000 downloadable archive photos for free.
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